New Quasar Surveys with WIRO: Colors of ~1000 Quasars at 0 < z < 3
Abstract
We present the colors of quasars observed as part of an imaging campaign using the Wyoming Infrared Observatory (WIRO). A major goal of the campaign was to calibrate the magnitudes of point sources in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometric system using WIRO's new DoublePrime camera. The sample we study is comprised of approximately 1000 quasars with redshift 0 < z < 3 that were matched to spectroscopically confirmed quasars in SDSS Stripe 82. As expected from earlier imaging surveys of quasars, we find that quasars occupy a region of u-g vs. g-r color-color space that is distinct from that of stars. The quasar u-g colors are considerably bluer than those of the stars while quasar g-r colors are only slightly bluer than the g-r colors of the majority of the observed stars. There is a noticeable correlation between the quasar redshift and the corresponding u-g color. As the redshift of a quasar increases, its u-g color becomes redder. In the g-r vs. r-i and r-i vs. i-z color-color spaces, the quasars occupy regions that overlap with the regions occupied by the majority of the stars, again in excellent agreement with the expectation from earlier surveys.This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under REU grant AST 1560461.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #229
- Pub Date:
- January 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AAS...22925006W